Common Sense Media Review
By Mieke VanderBorght
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based on child development research. How do we rate?
Easy stories launch learning but have limited reach.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 4+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Download
Videos and Photos
Learn to Read: Vowel Stories
What's It About?
Choose to go long or short in LEARN TO READ: VOWEL STORIES. Both categories have choices for each of the five vowels, and each choice has one story that features words with the target vowel sound. Kids can watch a video with animation and a narrator reading the story, read the story themselves, or explore a list of the featured words. Tap any text to hear it read out loud.
Is It Any Good?
Stories chock-full of vowel sounds give kids helpful exposure to target vowels but don't offer much else. The stories in Learn to Read: Vowel Stories are nothing special in terms of kids' literature, but they do offer easy-to-read short sentences that are structured around words carefully chosen to highlight the target vowel sound like hug, rug, bug, tub or dime, time, nine, fine. Prereaders and beginning or struggling readers alike can easily engage with the stories through the video, the read-to-me, or the read-on-my-own storybook option. Once kids have read the stories or watched the videos, though, there's nothing else to do. Parents should supplement with offscreen activities and scaffolding to help enhance the learning potential.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the sounds presented in Learn to Read: Vowel Stories. Read the stories together and highlight the words with the target vowel sound. Help prereaders hear the sound or help more advanced readers see the different ways the sounds can be written in words.
Highlight how the vowel sounds help make words rhyme. Recite nursery rhymes and sing classic kids' songs, pointing out the vowel sounds in the lyrics and rhyming words. Pick out the words in the app's stories that rhyme and use them to make rhyming sentences.
Check out the worksheets the app's developer offers on its website to offer kids more interactive experience working with vowel sound words.
App Details
- Devices : iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad , Android , Kindle Fire
- Subjects : Language & Reading : letter or word recognition , reading
- Pricing structure : Paid
- Release date : September 27, 2018
- Genre : Education
- Publisher : Quackenworth
- Version : 2.0
- Minimum software requirements : iOS 8.0 or later; Android 4.0 and up
- Last updated : July 11, 2020
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